


Those Our Diseases

by Teawithmagician



Series: Brave New But Boringly Old World [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Future Science Fiction, Futuristic Earth, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mutants, Older, Older Characters, Past Abuse, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Space Engineer, Space Husbands, Space Marine, Space Marines, Space family, Verbal Abuse, future earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 08:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5533757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking into Carl's white-blue eyes, Alexa knew he suffered, and though she saw no reason but his illness, she knew he suffered not only because of it but also because of what happened to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Our Diseases

**Author's Note:**

> Future world, bad memories, past wars, mutations and mental disorders.

Alexa Wong-Stravinski disapproved of her daughter's choice. Alexa Jr. dated a man in his late fifties, an RIG Wars vet. Alexa thought Alexa Jr. would try to find a man of a proper age and not a military of course.

"Carl," Alexa called her husband, to whom she was talking from the kitchen. "You are not listening to me."

"How can I fucking listen to you if the fucking pipe is pouring fucking hot water into the basement like fucking insane, and it has just melted our android plumber?" most politely howled Carl somewhere downstairs.

"Call technical support," responded Alexa and proceeded. "RIG Wars are not glorious, they did our family no good. You are ill and implanted all over and through, I am ill, having implant jaws and synthetic viscera. We met in a hospital, Carl, in an asteroid ESF-A hospital. It's not how people get acquainted."

"I think it won't be okay when our hot water will soak through to the neighbours' level," Carl's howls became more intensive as the sound of videocalling device from the hallway ended off in a sad short buzzer.

"Carl, are you calling to technical support?" asked Alexa, turning at the stool and looking downstairs, where the head of an aged man slowly raised, his bright white-blue eyes full of hatred.

"I've been calling to fucking technical support for fucking hours and this fucking retarded scum from call-center asked me to wait again and again because they were receiving too many calls due to this weekend gazers' abnormal activity," roared Carl, appearing in the doorway with a plumbing scanner in one hand, and a pair of rubber gloves in another.

"It just what I've been talking about," Alexa turned the coffeemaker on. Alexa Jr. slipped out the house with no coffee, hurrying up for that awarding ceremony of the superannuating friend of her. In a few hours after her leaving the pipes exploded, so there was no time for proper breakfast at all. "Just look at you, you don't even trying to pass the therapy. You are outraging every time something happens."

"Get the fuck off me, Alexa," advised Carl as his face reddened. Blood pressure sensor at his wrist squeaked, Carl tried to turn it off, but it only squeaked more. Carl hit his arm on a kitchen corner, growling as the implant ignited briefly under his skin, leaving and ugly burnt.

When Carl ceased screaming, Alexa and he exchanged the looks.

"Okay," said Carl haggardly, taking the stool. "I have problems."

"You are ignoring your pills, don't you?" asked Alexa, taking the mugs, pink and green, with smiling faces Alexa Jr. loved so much when she was a teen.

"I can do nothing with it," Carl pressed his arm to his sweating forehead. "It's just... the anger. Sometimes I think I really like the fits. I feel so alive. Don't you miss your feelings?" he asked, looking at Alexa intensively. "Don't you want to feel alive again?"

Sometimes Carl was very cruel though he didn't consider it as a cruelty. He used to offend Alexa with this his trait when they were younger, but not this time and not for the last twenty years, while Alexa was slowly losing the possibility to feel anything at all.

After the intoxication with neural gas, Alexa was left emotionally sheer as a blank page. She was quite effectual, very attentive, with a good memory, speech and analytic abilities, her intellect even higher than before the aftermath, but psychologically she was closer to an android than to a woman; she even had to get papers from her physician of her human origin.

When it happened Alexa was the first to feel the changes as they were light and indistinguishable like pale shadows. Alexa searched the Galactic Net, applied to Neuro-Programming Center, spoke of her difficulties and started the therapy. It didn't help. Every day after Alexa Jr. birth she felt less and less like a human, and more and more like an android.

NPC told Alexa they couldn't help, those techniques of them, pills and training didn't work. They advised Alexa to register on RIG vets' forums and find chapters for the ones suffering the Void Syndrome, a kind of psycho mutation of the ESF specialists, worked with the neuro-gas, forbidden after the Wars. They told her she was not alone, and, of course, she could attend the therapy, but it wouldn't help in any way — it was too late.

Alexa remembered that day. She didn't feel anything, even the slightest displeasure. But still she wanted to know, and she asked, "Would it affect my daughter?"

"No", the answer was. "Or less than you. She needs to register in our center if she feels any changes, but as for now we can see no danger."

Alexa thought about that much. She would say she was glad Alexa Jr. didn't inherit her mutation, but she didn't feel glad as she couldn't feel. She only knew that it would be better to Alexs Jr. to feel as she was living in the world of feeling ones. Ability to feel was necessary to adapt in society, wasn't it?

What the loss of the feeling meant to Alexa? She would lose a possibility to understand the greater part of her husband's and daughter's world. She would feel lonely, except she wouldn't be able to feel it. Leaving the NP Center Alexa thought of lobotomy, maybe it somehow worked like that, like this gas, except it doesn't — Alexa kept all her brain part, working exactly like they used to. Except she couldn't feel.

Carl suffered, Alexa knew. He wanted her warm, he wanted her feeling, but as her emotional world ceased, the temperature of her body lowered, too. Or Carl meant something else by saying "warm"? The Neuro-programmatic supervisor told Alexa temperature lowering was a part of her changes, gave her electronic booklets she studied and Carl never opened though he really should.

Carl didn't read the booklets, he didn't try to understand what Alexa was suffering of. One day Carl shouted, Alexa standing in the doors of the bedroom and Carl keeping the position between kitchen and Alexa Jr. room's door, "I want my wife back!"

"I am your wife," answered Alexa calmly.

"No, you are not!" yelled Carl. "You are a fucking robot!"

That was the day his first fit happened. Carl smashed the kitchen, broke everything that could be broken, throwing expensive cutlery of thin alien iron into the fortified outer window. When he started to beat his body on Alexa Jr's door, Alexa approached — silently, calmly — and cut Carl down with one of the moves she used to like when working for Earth Military Engineer Corps.

Carl was intoxicated, too, as he was in Space Marine Corps, his division always following the gas in those old Earth-designed gas masks that didn't work. His aftermath was the terrible anger, caused by hormone mutation. In the end, it appeared that only such a cold, unemotional, highly logical person as Alexa could stand his fits and cope with them.

Alexa signed the papers before Carl returned from the Mental Surgery Hospital. Carl was incurable, but Alexa promised to take care of him and confirmed her intentions before the Government of Colonial States. Her state of mind admitted it according to the documents she quickly looked through at her physician's office as her memory became more and more eidetic.

Looking into Carl's white-blue eyes, Alexa knew he suffered, and though she saw no reason but his illness, she knew he suffered not only because of it but also because of what happened to her.

"Sometimes I do," said Alexa plainly, as Carl was waiting for an answer, and it was advisable for him to get the answers. "But I can't get them back. Can you get back your personality, a man you were before we got intoxicated? You can't. We both can't. So let's live like we can, not like we would want to."

***

If you like this one, you may also like my another original work: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5771851


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